Gates, 45, is a longtime
business associate of Manafort, 68, having worked together since the mid-2000s,
and served as his deputy on the campaign. The two were indicted under seal on
Friday, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The indictment against
the two men contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States,
conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false
and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) statements, false
statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and
financial accounts.

Manafort arrived at the
FBI's Washington field office Monday morning. The two are being processed
separately, according to a law enforcement official. They will later be
transported to federal district court in Washington later Monday morning.

The two are scheduled to
make their initial court appearances before US District Magistrate Judge
Deborah Robinson at 1:30 p.m. ET Monday…..

Manafort entered the
Trump campaign orbit in early 2016, when he reached out to Trump's daughter
Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner and offered to work for free, according to The New York Times.

Manafort joined the
Trump campaign in March 2016 to help with delegate counting ahead of the
Republican National Convention, as some Republicans hoped to use arcane
delegate procedures to wrest the nomination from Trump at the convention in
Cleveland.

He soon was promoted to
campaign chairman, and he became the top official on the campaign after
then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was fired in June 2016.

His tenure didn't last
long.

The Times reported in August 2016 that Ukrainian investigators
found Manafort's name in an off-the-books, handwritten ledger detailing secret
payments — including $12.7 million to Manafort from Yanukovych's Party of
Regions.

Manafort denied he had
received any such payment and claims the ledger was forged. But just days
later, he
resigned from the campaign as the accusations swirling around him
became a major distraction for Trump.

Copy of FBI indictment dated 27 October 2017 here.Grand Jury Investigation, Memorandum Opinionhere.Manafort and Gates now under house arrest.

Sorry, but this is years
ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren't
Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????....

....Also, there is NO
COLLUSION!

On 3 October 2017 the FBI issued an indictment in United States of American v George Papadopouloson one count of making false statements concerning his interactions with certain foreign nationals whom he understood to have close connections with Russian government officials. Papadopoulos appears to have joined the Trump campaign in March 2016.He was part of Trump's six-man foreign policy teamled by then Alabama senator and now US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions.

Copy of Papadopoulos Statement of Offence can be read here. Copy of Papadopoulos plea agreement here.

A former foreign policy
advisor to Donald Trump's presidential campaign has pleaded guilty to lying to
the FBI about his contacts with Russians who claimed to have “thousands of
emails” on Hillary Clinton, in the latest charges filed in the investigation
of the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia.

George
Papadopoulos, 30, of Chicago, has agreed to cooperate with the
investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, according to a plea
agreement unsealed on Monday.

He pleaded guilty on
Oct. 5 to making false statements to disguise his contacts with Russians whom
he thought had “dirt” on Clinton, according to court papers. He was
arrested in July as he got off a plane at Dulles International Airport.

After he was contacted
by an unnamed Russian professor in March, Papadopoulos exchanged emails with an
official in the Russian foreign ministry, court papers say. Among the
topics he discussed was a possible visit by Trump to Russia.

“As mentioned we are all
very excited by the possibility of a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” one
Russian emailed him.

In April, after he had
become an advisor to the campaign, Papadopoulos met with the Russian professor
at a London hotel. The professor said he had just returned from a trip to
Moscow, where he was told “the Russians had emails of Clinton.”

Papadopolous told other
leaders in the Trump campaign that he was in contact with Russians, and said
there were some “interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip.”

An unnamed campaign
official, described as a campaign “supervisor,” encouraged him to make the
trip, a
document reads.

Mr Trump Jr has been the
focus of a string of revelations about a meeting with a Kremlin-linked
lawyer in 2016, billed as a part of a Russian government effort to help the
Republican's White House campaign.

Explosive emails, which
Mr Trump Jr published on his own Twitter account, show that:

Donald Trump Jr (and
others) knowingly had a meeting with a Kremlin-linked lawyer on June 9, 2016

The intermediary who
arranged the meeting offered "information that would incriminate"
Hillary Clinton and "her dealings with Russia" that would be
"very useful" to the campaign

The intermediary
described the information as "very high level and sensitive"

Most importantly, it was
described as "part of Russia and its Government's support for Mr
Trump"

On Friday, Trump
declared the investigations into any collusion between his campaign and the
Russian government all-but-over….

“It is now commonly
agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion
between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!”.....

After his inauguration,
the first time Trump mentioned collusion on Twitter was May 8.

“Director Clapper
reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows,” he wrote on
Twitter, referring to former national intelligence director James R. Clapper
Jr., “there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.”

“The Russia-Trump
collusion story is a total hoax,” he added,
“when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”

At the moment Trump
tweeted about how there wasn’t any collusion — the first and second times
of 14
tweets in total — the investigations into collusion were limited to an
FBI counterintelligence investigation and House and Senate committees digging
into the matter. The next day, though, Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey,
triggering the chain of events that led to the appointment of Mueller and his
investigation.

When Trump was
interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt shortly after the Comey firing, he was
adamant.

“I think that looking
into me and, the campaign … look, I have nothing to do [with it],” he said.
“This was set up by the Democrats. There is no collusion between me
and my campaign and the Russians. The other thing is the Russians did not
affect the vote.” He also told Holt that “when I decided to just [fire Comey],
I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is
a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election
that they should have won.’ ”

However, Russia’s
efforts to influence the US election have been repeatedly, unequivocally
confirmed on the record by all top US intelligence officials, including those
appointed by Trump.

A report (pdf)
issued by US intelligence officials on Jan. 6 stated Russian President Vladimir
Putin was behind a campaign to influence the 2016 election, “denigrate
Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” and
stated that Putin had “a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

During a public Senate
Intelligence Committee hearing (pdf)
this May, Virginia’s Mark Warner asked top intelligence officials if they
agreed with the conclusions of this report that “Russian intelligence agencies
were responsible for the hacking and leaking of information and using
misinformation to influence our elections?”

Every intelligence
official answered yes. Intelligence officials at the hearing included
representatives from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National
Security Agency, as well as Trump-appointed CIA director Mike Pompeo and Trump’s
chosen director of national intelligence, Dan Coats. (See 42:30 mark
on the video below, or at the 1:04 mark on the video on the Senate
website).

Amends the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Act 2009 to: include certain serious criminal offences as a new category of ‘prescribed offence’ for the purposes of the automatic disqualification regime in relation to registered organisations; establish an offence for a disqualified person to continue to act as an official or in a way that influences the affairs of an organisation; allow the Federal Court to prohibit officials from holding office in certain circumstances or if they are otherwise not a fit and proper person; allow the Federal Court to cancel the registration of an organisation on a range of grounds; allow applications to be made to the Federal Court for a range of other orders; expand the grounds on which the Federal Court may order remedial action to deal with governance issues in an organisation; expressly provide that the Federal Court may appoint an administrator to an organisation or part of an organisation as part of a remedial scheme; introduce a public interest test for amalgamations of registered organisations; and make minor and technical amendments.

The Australian Senate refused to support this bill on 17 October 2017 so the Turnbull Government read the bill a second time, had a short speech read into Hansard and immediately adjourned the debate.

The Senate next sits on 13 November 2017 and one suspects that attempts to swing the cross benchers towards supporting this bill has ratcheted up more than a few notches.

If you don’t agree with this almost constant attack on the existence of unions in Australia then your state senators can be contacted here.

People [asylum seekers] receiving government payments while they wait to see if they will be granted protection have been told they must seek permission from the immigration department and their landlords before buying an animal.

* The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a complex and highly valued national reform. If implemented well, it will substantially improve the wellbeing of people with disability and Australians more generally.

* The level of commitment to the success and sustainability of the NDIS is extraordinary. This is important because ‘making it work’ is not only the responsibility of the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), but also that of governments, participants, families and carers, providers, and the community.

* The scale, pace and nature of the changes that the NDIS is driving are unprecedented in Australia. To reach the estimated 475 000 participants in the scheme by 2019 20, the NDIA needs to approve hundreds of plans a day and review hundreds more. The reality is that the current timetable for participant intake will not be met. Governments and the NDIA need to start planning now for a changed timetable, including working through the financial implications.

* Based on trial and transition data, NDIS costs are broadly on track with the NDIA’s long term modelling, but this is in large part because not all committed supports are used. While some cost pressures are emerging (such as higher numbers of children entering the scheme), the NDIA has put in place initiatives to address them. The benefits of the NDIS are also becoming apparent. Early evidence suggests that many (but not all) NDIS participants are receiving more disability supports than previously, and they have more choice and control.

* In the transition phase, the NDIA has focused too much on quantity (meeting participant intake estimates) and not enough on quality (planning processes), supporting infrastructure and market development. For the scheme to achieve its objectives, the NDIA must find a better balance between participant intake, the quality of plans, participant outcomes, and financial sustainability.

#Greater emphasis is needed on pre planning, in depth planning conversations, plan quality reporting, and more specialised training for planners.

*A significant challenge in the transition phase is developing the supply of disability services and growing the disability care workforce. It is estimated that 1 in 5 new jobs over the next few years will need to be in disability care, but workforce growth remains way too slow.

#Emerging shortages should be addressed by independent price monitoring and regulation, more effective coordination among governments to develop markets (including intervening in thin markets), a targeted approach to skilled migration, and equipping participants to exercise choice.

* The interface between the NDIS and other disability and mainstream services is critical for participant outcomes and the financial sustainability of the scheme. Some disability supports are not being provided because of unclear boundaries about the responsibilities of the different levels of government. Governments must set clearer boundaries at the operational level around ‘who supplies what’ to people with disability, and only withdraw services when continuity of service is assured.

* NDIS funding arrangements should better reflect the insurance principles of the scheme. Governments need to allow flexibility around the NDIA’s operational budget and commit to establishing a pool of reserves. [my yellow highlighting]

"Australian journalism’s freak show: how
a serious newspaper deals with its enemies

Journalism is in crisis, we’re told
constantly.

But there’s another journalism crisis
that has been disrupting and polluting the Australian media for more than a
decade, a crisis that has nothing to do with broken business models, Facebook
or the rise of so-called fake news.

This is the crisis of how a serious
national newspaper has, for at least a decade, waged vicious, personal, biased
editorial Holy Wars against its ideological, political and commercial enemies
in the name of “news”, “journalism” and “professional reporting”.

And not just once or occasionally, but
often and serially.

Of course the technique of journalism
Holy Wars — as we’re calling it in a 13-part series that starts today in Crikey — is as old as journalism itself. It was
the red meat of William Randolph Hearst’s media empire that was captured so
viscerally in the movie Citizen Kane, and
it’s a device that has been practised with ruthless amorality by British
tabloids for a century and by Fox News for two decades.

But the crucial difference between
other global attack-dog media and The Australian is
that it purports to be a quality newspaper — one described by then-prime
minister Tony Abbott at its 50th birthday dinner in 2014 as “one of the world’s
very best newspapers … no think-tank, no institution, no university has so
consistently and so successfully captured and refined the way we think about
ourselves”.

The Australian Holy Wars may appear to some
people like an internecine media attack by one publication taking cheap
ideological potshots at another. We beg to disagree.

Over the next two weeks, Crikey will catalogue one of the ugliest and most
insidious features of Australian public life: the permanent spectacle of one of
the country’s handful of serious daily news operations abusing its power to
conduct personalised vindictive editorial warfare dressed up as objective
reporting.

The behaviour of the “national
broadsheet” towards its enemies is no dirty little secret. Almost all the
players in politics, government, academia, science, media and policy know how
it works. And every month or two they see it unfold, embarrassed, like watching
a public flogging where you turn your head away. “Like a true narcissist, it
lets its own interests, agendas and catfights affect the quality of the
journalism in its pages,” says journalism professor Mark Pearson, who worked for
the paper as a young journalist in the 1980s.

But there’s a reason insiders rarely
comment or complain about Australian journalism’s most distasteful freak
show. They know that any of us could be next. Everyone in the Australian public
space is on notice: if you cross us, or our
proprietor, his family, our worldview or our business interests, you could
become the next victim of an Australian Holy War."

Sunday, 29 October 2017

We have all noticed it. The decline in butterfly, moth, bee, beetle and other flying insect numbers in our gardens and local town parks – even the total disappearance of once regular seasonal insect visitors.

When was the last time you walked through a fluttering cloud of butterflies, disturbed a cluster of moths in the thick grass, admired the glossy sheen on the back of a "Christmas Beetle", noticed a host of dragonflies dancing above summer rain puddles or watched brightly coloured native bees going about their business amongst the blossoms?

A new study appears to confirm a decline which became very noticeable in the small town where I live by the late 1990s.

A new scientific study has found "dramatic" and "alarming" declines in insect populations in areas in Germany, which researchers say could have far-reaching consequences for the world's crop production and natural ecosystems…..

"The flying insect community as a whole... has been decimated over the last few decades," said the study, which was conducted by Researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands and the Entomological Society Krefeld in Germany.

"Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services."

Co-author Caspar Hallman said he and his colleagues were "very, very surprised" by the results.

"These are not agricultural areas, these are locations meant to preserve biodiversity, but still we see the insects slipping out of our hands," he told CNN.

Entomologists have long had evidence of the decline of individual species, said Tanya Latty, a research and teaching fellow in entomology at Sydney University's School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

However, few studies have taken such a broad view of entire insect populations, she says.

"This study lumps all flying insects together," she said, which gives researchers a more accurate picture of the overall decline.

"If you see these sort of dramatic declines in protected areas it makes me worry that this (trend) could be everywhere," she said.

Global declines in insects have sparked wide interest among scientists, politicians, and the general public. Loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services. Our understanding of the extent and underlying causes of this decline is based on the abundance of single species or taxonomic groups only, rather than changes in insect biomass which is more relevant for ecological functioning. Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass using Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in Germany (96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend of local entomofauna. Our analysis estimates a seasonal decline of 76%, and mid-summer decline of 82% in flying insect biomass over the 27 years of study. We show that this decline is apparent regardless of habitat type, while changes in weather, land use, and habitat characteristics cannot explain this overall decline. This yet unrecognized loss of insect biomass must be taken into account in evaluating declines in abundance of species depending on insects as a food source, and ecosystem functioning in the European landscape.

INTRODUCTION

Loss of insects is certain to have adverse effects on ecosystem functioning, as insects play a central role in a variety of processes, including pollination [1, 2], herbivory and detrivory [3, 4], nutrient cycling [4] and providing a food source for higher trophic levels such as birds, mammals and amphibians. For example, 80% of wild plants are estimated to depend on insects for pollination [2], while 60% of birds rely on insects as a food source [5]. The ecosystem services provided by wild insects have been estimated at $57 billion annually in the USA [6]. Clearly, preserving insect abundance and diversity should constitute a prime conservation priority.

Current data suggest an overall pattern of decline in insect diversity and abundance. For example, populations of European grassland butterflies are estimated to have declined by 50% in abundance between 1990 and 2011 [7]. Data for other well-studied taxa such as bees [8–14] and moths [15–18] suggest the same trend. Climate change, habitat loss and fragmentation, and deterioration of habitat quality have been proposed as some of the prime suspects responsible for the decline [9–11, 13, 18–22]. However, the number of studies on insect trends with sufficient replication and spatial coverage are limited [10, 23–25] and restricted to certain well-studied taxa. Declines of individual species or taxa (e.g. [7, 26]) may not reflect the general state of local entomofauna [27]. The total insect biomass would then be a better metric for the status of insects as a group and its contribution to ecosystem functioning, but very few studies have monitored insect biomass over an extensive period of time [28]. Hence, to what extent total insect biomass has declined, and the relative contribution of each proposed factor to the decline, remain unresolved yet highly relevant questions for ecosystem ecology and conservation.

Here, we investigate total aerial insect biomass between 1989 and 2016 across 96 unique location-year combinations in Germany, representative of Western European low-altitude nature protection areas embedded in a human-dominated landscape (S1 Fig). In all years we sampled insects throughout the season (March through October), based on a standardized sampling scheme using Malaise traps. We investigated rate of decline in insect biomass, and examined how factors such as weather, habitat and land use variables influenced the declines. Knowledge on the state of insect biomass, and it's direction over time, are of broad importance to ecology and conservation, but historical data on insect biomass have been lacking. Our study makes a first step into filling this gap, and provides information that is vital for the assessment of biodiversity conservation and ecosystem health in agricultural landscapes.

RESULTS

Following corrections for seasonal variation and habitat cluster (basic model, see Materials and methods), the annual trend coefficient of our basic model was significantly negative (annual trend coefficient = −0.063, sd = 0.002, i.e. 6.1% annual decline). Based on this result, we estimate that a major (up to 81.6% [79.7–83.4%]) decline in mid-summer aerial insect biomass has taken place since 1989 (Fig 2A). However, biomass loss was more prominent in mid-summer as compared to the start and end of the season (Fig 3A), indicating that the highest losses occur when biomass is highest during the season (Fig 2B). As such, a seasonally weighted estimate (covering the period 1-April to 30-October; see methods) results in an overall 76.7% [74.8–78.5%] decline over a 27 year period. The pattern of decline is very similar across locations that were sampled more than once (Fig 4), suggesting that the estimated temporal decline based on the entire dataset is not confounded by the sampling procedure. Re-estimation of the annual decline based on 26 locations that have been sampled in more than one year (S4 Fig), revealed a similar rate of decline (76.2%[73.9–78.3%]).

Fig 2. Temporal distribution of insect biomass.

(A) Boxplots depict the distribution of insect biomass (gram per day) pooled over all traps and catches in each year (n = 1503). Based on our final model, the grey line depicts the fitted mean (+95% posterior credible intervals) taking into account weather, landscape and habitat effects. The black line depicts the mean estimated trend as estimated with our basic model. (B) Seasonal distribution of insect biomass showing that highest insect biomass catches in mid summer show most severe declines. Color gradient in both panels range from 1989 (blue) to 2016 (orange).

A court timetable has been set in the AWU’s fight to challenge the validity of this week’s unprecedented police raids launched by the Registered Organisations Commission (ROC) on the union’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.

Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, who are representing the AWU, said today that court orders confirming a timetable for the case had been agreed to by all parties, removing the need for a Federal Court directions hearing that had been scheduled for this morning in Melbourne.

Maurice Blackburn Principal Josh Bornstein said critically that the orders were made together with commitments from both the ROC and AFP that no documents seized in this week’s raids by the AFP will be handed over to the ROC until the court has heard the case.

Mr Bornstein said the union's case compromised two key parts, namely:

That the raid conducted by the AFP was illegal; and

That the investigation by the ROC is illegal because it is politically motivated.

“Prior to these raids, the union had handed over disclosure statements from 10 years ago in relation to Get Up donations to the ROC, but in doing so had pressed the regulator to provide it with information about the political interference by the Turnbull government in this matter.

“Disturbingly, the ROC has refused to hand over all file notes of its communications with Minister Cash and her office and we will continue to seek all such documents as part of the federal court case,” he said.

Under the agreed timetable evidence must be obtained from all parties next month, with the respondents required to file their defence by 1 December 2017. A substantive hearing will be held in December at a date to be set, following the filing of defences.

AWU activity during the years 2003-2010 were examined by the Royal Commission, including financial records which would have included donations by AWU to outside organisations/groups, including the $100k donation to the activist groupGetUp!

No evidence appears to have been presented during Commission hearings relating to GetUp! or to the 2006 AWU donation to this group and, there were no adverse findings made against Bill Shorten in the Commission's December 2015 Final Report.

As far as I’m aware a reporting unit such as the Australian Workers Union New South Wales Branch or Australian Workers Victorian Branch is only legally obliged to hold records for 7 years and it appears Ms. Cash was ignoring the fact that a) there was no obligation to supply her with this so-called evidence and b) these documents could have been lawfully disposed of anytime after 2013 if the union had so decided.

HODGMAN MUST NOW DEMONSTRATE MATURITY – Don’t treat takayna / Tarkine as political football

“Aboriginal heritage in takayna is one step closer to permanent protection, with federal agreement that the Hodgman government cannot continue its destruction there without assessment and federal approval. This is what Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has been seeking in court hearings since 2014. A major achievement for us on our way to Aboriginal control and protection of our own heritage,” Sharnie Read, spokesperson for Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said.

“This decision is a strong message to the Hodgman Government that their stance regarding 4WD access to the Western Tasmanian Aboriginal Cultural Landscape (WTACL) is clearly wrong. They have not been capable of showing a way forward that will not impact and cause irreparable damage to the ancient Aboriginal heritage, cultural and natural values,” Sharnie Read said.

“The Hodgman government cannot be trusted to protect, manage or value this significant landscape and should return the area to the rightful owners, the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. This is the only way we can be assured the area is afforded the protected and conservation it deserves,” Sharnie Read said.

“Now the Federal Government have recognised their role, they must also accept responsibility and stand up to our intransigent state government and do what needs to be done to protect this national heritage listed landscape. It is a national shame to have vehicles smashing through one of Australia’s most significant and richest Aboriginal heritage landscapes, where critically endangered and other threatened species rely on an intact wild coastline for survival. These tracks need to stay closed,” said Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber.

"Actions speak louder than words. The Tasmanian government tried to ride roughshod over due process for political advantage with a constituency who have been riding roughshod over priceless Aboriginal heritage of the ages. It's time to show respect, back off, and elevate protection of this special indigenous heritage above base politics." Peg Putt, Markets for Change said.

"This is a welcome decision that gives yet another opportunity to Premier and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Will Hodgman to prioritise leadership, good faith and what is right, over cheap, local politics and drop his plan to expand destructive 4WD tracks across an irreplaceable Aboriginal cultural landscape," said Vica Bayley, Campaign Manager, The Wilderness Society Tasmania.

“Protecting the natural shorebird values protects the cultural values present on these remote beaches – both of these have been present for thousands of generations, and deserve better than the Tasmanian Government’s callous disregard for them in preference to destructive 4WDs,” said Dr Eric Woehler, Birdlife Tasmania.

"Premier Hodgman has an opportunity to abandon this destructive policy. Or he can push ahead with three and a half years of community conflict and disrespect of this outstanding Aboriginal heritage", said Save the Tarkine Campaign Coordinator, Scott Jordan.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
[Adopted and proclaimed by United Nations General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948]

NSW North Coast

Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Moggy Musings

Hi! My name is Boy. I'm a male bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I have been pestering Clarencegirl to allow me a small space on North Coast Voices.

A false flag musing: I have noticed one particular voice on Facebook which is Pollyanna-positive on the subject of the Port of Yamba becoming a designated cruise ship destination. What this gentleman doesn’t disclose is that, as a principal of Middle Star Pty Ltd, he could be thought to have a potential pecuniary interest due to the fact that this corporation (which has had an office in Grafton since 2012) provides consultancy services and tourismbusiness development services.

A religion & local government musing: On 11 October 2017 Clarence Valley Council has the Church of Jesus Christ Development Fund Inc in Sutherland Local Court No. 6 for a small claims hearing. It would appear that there may be a little issue in rendering unto Caesar. On 19 September 2017 an ordained minister of a religion (which was named by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in relation to 40 instances of historical child sexual abuse on the NSW North Coast) read the Opening Prayer at Council’s ordinary monthly meeting. Earlier in the year an ordained minister (from a church network alleged to have supported an overseas orphanage closed because of child abuse claims in 2013) read the Opening Prayer and an ordained minister (belonging to yet another church network accused of ignoring child sexual abuse in the US and racism in South Africa) read the Opening Prayer at yet another ordinary monthly meeting. Nice one councillors - you are covering yourselves with glory!

An investigative musing: Newcastle Herald, 12 August 2017: The state’s corruption watchdog has been asked to investigate the finances of the Awabakal Aboriginal Local Land Council, less than 12 months after the troubled organisation was placed into administration by the state government. The Newcastle Herald understands accounting firm PKF Lawler made the decision to refer the land council to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after discovering a number of irregularities during an audit of its financial statements.The results of the audit were recently presented to a meeting of Awabakal members. Administrator Terry Lawler did not respond when contacted by the Herald and a PKF Lawler spokesperson said it was unable to comment on the matter. Given the intricate web of company relationships that existed with at least one former board member it is not outside the realms of possibility that, if ICAC accepts this referral, then United Land Councils Limited (registered New Zealand) and United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd(registered Australia) might be interviewed. North Coast Voices readers will remember that on 15 August 2015 representatives of these two companied gave evidence before NSW Legislative Council General Purpose Standing Committee No. 6 INQUIRY INTO CROWN LAND. This evidence included advocating for a Yamba mega port.

A Nationals musing: Word around the traps is that NSW Nats MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis has been talking up the notion of cruise ships visiting the Clarence River estuary. Fair dinkum! That man can be guaranteed to run with any bad idea put to him. I'm sure one or more cruise ships moored in the main navigation channel on a regular basis for one, two or three days is something other regular river users will really welcome. *pause for appreciation of irony* The draft of the smallest of the smaller cruise vessels is 3 metres and it would only stay safely afloat in that channel. Even the Yamba-Iluka ferry has been known to get momentarily stuck in silt/sand from time to time in Yamba Bay and even a very small cruise ship wouldn't be able to safely enter and exit Iluka Bay. You can bet your bottom dollar operators of cruise lines would soon be calling for dredging at the approach to the river mouth - and you know how well that goes down with the local residents.

A local councils musing: Which Northern Rivers council is on a low-key NSW Office of Local Government watch list courtesy of feet dragging by a past general manager?

A serial pest musing: I'm sure the Clarence Valley was thrilled to find that a well-known fantasist is active once again in the wee small hours of the morning treading a well-worn path of accusations involving police, local business owners and others.

An investigative musing: Which NSW North Coast council is batting to have the longest running code of conduct complaint investigation on record?

A which bank? musing: Despite a net profit last year of $9,227 million the Commonwealth Bank still insists on paying below Centrelink deeming rates interest on money held in Pensioner Security Accounts. One local wag says he’s waiting for the first bill from the bank charging him for the privilege of keeping his pension dollars at that bank.

A Daily Examiner musing: Just when you thought this newspaper could sink no lower under News Corp management, it continues to give column space to Andrew Bolt.

A thought to ponder musing: In case of bushfire or flood - do you have an emergency evacuation plan for the family pet?

An adoption musing: Every week on the NSW North Coast a number of cats and dogs find themselves without a home. If you want to do your bit and give one bundle of joy a new family, contact Happy Paws on 0419 404 766 or your local council pound.